Adamala Team Builds Synthetic Cells That Replicate and Divide With 36 Enzymes
Updated
Updated · Quanta Magazine · Nov 12
Adamala Team Builds Synthetic Cells That Replicate and Divide With 36 Enzymes
3 articles · Updated · Quanta Magazine · Nov 12
Summary
Adamala’s group packed liposomes with a DNA replication system and 36 enzymes, then observed synthetic cells replicate DNA, grow and split into daughter cells after months of lab work.
Larger protocells produced more offspring, creating a crude selection effect, though the team said the system still needs supplied sugar, lipids, nucleotides and ribosomes to keep functioning.
The July preprint was described as a major step because it showed dead biological parts can be assembled into a system that performs several core life functions without any single “magic” ingredient.
Researchers still stop short of calling the cells alive: the mutations driving different growth rates were engineered in advance, so the system lacks self-sustaining metabolism and open-ended evolution.
The result fits a broader shift in origins-of-life research away from single-molecule theories toward testing how networks of components can cross a continuum from chemistry toward biology.